Crowbar Nurse Chapter 3

It felt great to let loose and slay a horde of zombies again.
Though as refres.h.i.+ng as that was, I couldn’t help but feel guilty as well. They were formerly people after all.
It made me question what gives me the right to kill them.

… ugh, I’ve never even considered any of this when I game. Having blood on my hands is mentally rougher than I thought…

Heaving a sigh, I stood the a.s.sault rifle up against the wall then sat on one of the dining chairs… one that the old man wasn’t.
I know I’m in a game, but I’m still not about to sit in the old man’s seat.

Still, why is this even happening…? Because my phone glitched…?

Thoughts ran through my head as I was trying to figure out my situation. It was then I noticed the desk to the side… the key was on the desk, just as I remembered reading about on the walkthrough site.

Might as well take it.

Kiryū looked understandably bewildered as he watched me take the key.

“Umm, hey… Sera? What’s that key do?”
“It’s super useful and since I don’t have a pocket… would you please hang on to it? Anyway, what did you mean by that? Sera?”

I looked up at Kiryū.
He looked back at me with a troubled expression. He knows my name, even though I’m sure we’ve just met.

“… I’m not sure if you realize it yet, but right now, physically, you’re Sera Harvey, the protagonist of Deadman’s Conflict 2.”
“Are you for real?”
“I swear. I’ve never played any zombie games before, but I’ve seen this series at the game show in Tokyo before.”
“… that’s… very surprising…”

As stupid as I may have sounded, I had no other words but those. Subconsciously, I began looking at my hands… and then my feet.

My long, fair legs were peeking through the bottom of an adorable green sundress. My hair was in a shade of dark bluish black. And tipping my small, slender hands were my fingernails in pink.

… this is definitely not my own body.
This body belonged to the beauty who contrasted the deplorable battlefield of Confi City, the stealthy one-man army of Deadman’s Conflict—Sera Harvey.

“… I’m Sera…”

I shook my head in denial as I finally realized who I was.

“What the heck happened to me…”

The truth was sickening, troubling. This situation was all too ridiculous. Kiryū, as if he understood how I felt, began his explanation.

“From what I can tell, you’re just an average Joe who got dragged from the real world to this side.”
“… that’s what it seems like. I swear, I was just a rookie nurse working free overtime in a sweatshop they called a hospital… Kiryū, this is some sort of a dream, right…?”

This would be strange topic if I were in a dream, but I still had to ask… I still needed that small glimmer of false hope for consolation.

“… it’d be nice if it were a dream.”

Kiryū shrugged as he spoke, sounding just like a doctor giving a patient bad diagnosis. He continued with a heavy heart and gently broke the news to me.

“… but I don’t think this is simply a dream. I don’t know how else to describe it, but we’re inexplicably trapped in this world.”
“No…”
“I feel you. It’s hard to accept. But have you ever been dog-tired and out of breath in a dream before?”

I couldn’t help but shake my head and answer with no.

“… I haven’t had a dream like… that… I suppose. Isn’t this a little too unrealistic though? Zombies only exist in fiction.
The concept of the reanimated dead just doesn’t make sense. It goes against the laws of physics. They show all signs of being dead, you know? And how can they produce any adenosine triphosphate to move?
I don’t even know how I got here in the first place… to this world…”

I was at my wits’ end by now.

—I opened a door to another universe by working overtime and getting my phone hacked.

No one would believe that.
It’d make more sense if it were just a dream. Or maybe I’m in some sort of web novel. They say the hit genre right now is about getting reborn into a game world. Even my brother mentioned he was into that sort of novels and anime.
I felt more and more ill as I think about all of this. To begin with, I was on the brink of death at work up until moments ago.

“… real life blows. Were you working overtime too?”

Perhaps he could sense my mental state, Kiryū forced a small smile and began to sympathize. His words seemed a little cool yet gentle.
I slowly looked up at him.
Kiryū looked as shallow as he did handsome, but the way he spoke was more than genuine.

“Me too. Just now—rather, hours ago, I was stuck at work debugging with the whole team.”
“… what’s that?”
“You play a game thoroughly to make sure that it’s free of any bugs.
It’s a time-consuming process in which gotta play the game over and over again. People from other departments would get on your case and check in with you too. I really thought I was gonna kick the bucket. Then, before I knew it, I got trapped in this ridiculous world.”
“I see…”
“… I guess I should apologize too. I might look like a real stud, but inside, I’m really an old fart. I’m just like you, from the real world. Except that I’m a 30-year-old software engineer working for a game dev company.”

I let out a slight giggle in spite of myself. At first, I a.s.sumed he was a little too serious and awkward, but he’s actually quite kind.

“You can’t call yourself an old fart yet when you’re just 30.”
“I appreciate that, but you’ll feel it too when you turn 30. People younger than you will make fun of you for everything, so you gotta be prepared for it.”
“Hah, that sounds rough… oh, by the way, do you know who your character is?”
“Kiryū Sōichirō, right? I’ve, uhh… seen it at the game show.”
“Oh, so you do know!”

Letting his guard down a little, Kiryū laughed with me.
He looked like the world’s hottest playboy, but I’d be no better if I said that out loud.
We’re both adults who are sick and tired of their jobs, but we certainly don’t look the part.

“I’m glad you’re smiling again. I wouldn’t know what would happen to me if I hadn’t found you too.”
“… what do you mean? Were you with someone else?”
“Yeah.”

His smile faded into a frown.

“… I found you as I watched my friend get eaten by zombies.”
“Like, in a cutscene?”
“No… he was a real person. He lost his cool and tried to clear a horde with his bare hands.”
“That’s such a movie cliché…”
“I don’t get it either. He was saying we’re not going to be rescued anyway… I guess he was at his limits couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Kiryū looked down at the ground and heaved a sigh.

“… please, be strong. For me. We’ll think of some way to safely break out of this world.
We can do this together. So please, promise me…”

As his voice trails off, I looked down at the ground and felt a wave of anxiety building up in my chest.

—is he saying we might die in here like his friend…?

But what did he mean that he wasn’t going to be rescued? Does he know something we don’t…?

Silence fell in the b.l.o.o.d.y, musty room.
… then, I remembered something very important and I grabbed the a.s.sault rifle.
s.h.i.+t. Christ. This is bad. We can’t afford to be just sitting here.

“—Sera, wait! Let’s talk about this some more!”
“There’s lots I want to say too, but I just recalled something really important.
In this game, we’re in danger until we reach a safehouse.”
“… we’re in danger?”

Kiryū now looked very serious.

“… you mean, they’ll keep sp.a.w.ning and resp.a.w.ning, coming at us?”
“That’s exactly it.”

I’m glad that Kiryū, being a game dev, quickly understood what I’m talking about, but I can’t rejoice yet.

“The longer we stay at a location, the more enemies will sp.a.w.n.”
“Ugh. That sounds like the whole world is gonna get laggy… but I get what you mean.
It’ll be dangerous if we stay here any longer. We’ve gotta keep moving so they don’t form too big of a horde…”
“That’s right.
We should head to a safehouse ASAP. But, before that…”

I stopped in the middle of my sentence to rack my brain. There was so much we should be doing.

—what are the locations of this game like?

Are there any places where I can’t return?

Are there any key items that I should get before I leave?

“… before we head to the safehouse, there are two things we have to recover.”

I walked towards the exit as I explained things to him.

“First, I need to pick up the ‘smartphone’ I dropped earlier. Second is the ‘Vital Watch’ that gets dropped in the beginning of this level.”
“Vital Watch?”

Kiryū followed behind me.

“It’s critical to our safety that we get that watch. Have you… never played any DMC game before?”

He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders no.

“They say you can do whatever you want in these zombie killers, but they aren’t my thing.”
“I see. In that case… umm, the Vital Watch looks like an Apfel Watch.”
“I see.”
“It’s a gadget that… how should I explain this? In short, it’s kinda like a status screen that you can wear around your wrist.”

I grabbed my left wrist with my fingers to demonstrate to Kiryū.

“It fits right around here, and it displays your vital stats, the currently time, and other basic info like that.
DMC3 holds your hands throughout the game so that it’s easy to get into it. I think we should be able to find it in this world too.”
“I see… diagetic UI, eh?”

Kiryū nodded along as if he completely understood me.

“It sounds like we should definitely get our hands on that Vital Watch.
… but your phone? Is it really worth the risk it to get it back?”
“Definitely. It was because my phone glitched up that I got sent to this world. It’s very likely a key item, don’t you think?”
“Your phone glitched…?”
“I’ll tell you the details once we get moving. We can’t sit and chat here anyway.”

He seemed really interested about what happened to my phone.

“In any case, we should definitely go back to get it. We must. I just have to post these pictures online, y’know?”
“… what was that?”
“Nothing at all. You’re hearing things.”
“No s.h.i.+t?”

I digressed but brushed it off with a clap of my hands.

“Well, that’s not important right now. We should get hurrying though! Oh, and where’s your phone?”
“Oh. I don’t have it with me.”

Kiryū scratched the back of his head and shrugged his shoulders again.

“I fell asleep at my desk… and when I woke up, I was lying face-up in this world. My phone is probably still on my desk at work.”
“Alright, then for now, let’s go retrieve my phone.”
“Gotcha.”
“Then, we’ll go get the Vital Watch.”
“Yep.”

—and so, that was our plan.

First, the phone. Then, the watch.

… the Vital Watch should have dropped after the first section of the game… it should be our first item.
Right now, though, we’re at the end of the first locale—Downtown.
That means we’ll have to backtrack through the stage.

—… “we’re not going to be rescued anyway”…

That phrase kept coursing through my mind.
Nothing but bad feelings welled up in my chest as I looked downwards.

… but now’s not the time to get all depressed.

If we stay here any longer, the game is going to sp.a.w.n too many zombies.
I shook off my anxiety and I tried to cheer up both Kiryū and myself.

“We don’t know anything about our situation, nor do we know anything about how to get back to our world… but let’s keep playing this game. That’s all we can do.”

: // // /ch003/ /next/